Abstract
A large section of management literature, business school courses and corporate training programs focus on leadership skills. The importance of values, particularly human values, is hardly dealt with. The paper attempts to establish the deep connection between leadership and human values for achieving holistic effectiveness by adopting a consciousness approach in the spiritual sense. The seminal contribution of S. K. Chakraborty has been in anchoring a solid spiritual foundation to human values and leadership using insights from Indian ethos dating back to the seers of the Upanishads and its modern proponents like Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo. The paper elaborates on the roles of intellect or reason and emotions or feelings in the path of values development of the leaders. Drawing inspiration from the illumined minds of the East and the West, the paper charts out a roadmap for a leadership journey from information through knowledge to wisdom. Finally, the paper concludes with reflections on leadership as an adventure of consciousness.
This chapter has commonality in parts with my paper titled ‘Human Values at Work: A Consciousness Approach’ published in ‘3D…IBA Journal of Management & Leadership’ Vol. 9 Issue 2, January–June 2018, pp. 10–21 published from Indus Business Academy, Bangalore. The Chapter has been included in this Book after receiving consent for publication from Subhash Sharma, Director, Indus Business Academy and also the Editor of the Journal.
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Mukherjee, S. (2022). Leadership as an Adventure of Consciousness. In: Mukherjee, S., Zsolnai, L. (eds) Global Perspectives on Indian Spirituality and Management . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1158-3_20
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